"Haven" means "port", but there's nothing in this place to justify that name except a proximity to water. I spent a few months in a neighbourhood called "De Werven" ("The Docks" - again, you won't find any) and found that in its own suburban way, it was as insane as Almere Stad. There is an obvious deliberate pattern of design that runs through the whole area - interconnecting houses, diamond-shaped raised flowerbeds - that create an impression of living in a giant beehive. The bus line - identified by a colour - runs from point A to point B ("de Werven") by one route, but returns by another, making it very easy to take the wrong bus, wait at the wrong stop, and end up in a totally unfamiliar place - despite the sameness that runs through the whole neighbourhood, slight discrepancies tell me that this is not the section of neighbourhood I should be in, it's as if the fabric of reality has shifted a bit, and in all I feel more lost than if every street had looked totally different. This neighbourhood can be roughly separated into isolated buildings, shopping centre and suburban sprawl. To reflect the chaotic feel of the place, I spun around snapping pictures left and right, a number of which were only half usable because the actual subject of the photograph was shifted way off centre.
The road to hell, although one wouldn't say so judging from its appearance. A bus stop called "Het Oor" ("the Ear").
Don't be deceived by the lushness of the shadowed green road... The bus lanes in Almere Haven are something special, they weave through the neighbourhood encased in green and isolated from the living area. Special contact points, the so-called "bus stops", act as portals where passengers may leave one dimension and enter the other.
One of the few isolated buildings.
The densely packed living area, the blocks of houses raised in places to allow passage underneath into other areas of sameness. Requires no further comment, I think. Lack of privacy guaranteed. I'd sooner keep pet mice in this maze than humans.
The flamboyant entry into the neighbourhood's shopping centre. Vivid pinks and blues bring out that money-spending urge.
Paving patterns in the shopping centre. Each corner of this square runs off into some entry or exit. The first picture shows the bus stops, so conveniently close to the shops that on leaving one, you bump into the other. The third picture shows an odd statue: a dolphin on a table. The fourth picture shows the public building "Corrosia (de Roestbak)" - corrode, rust, get it, ha ha - seemingly inaccessible behind a body of water.
The drab living apartments behind all this shopping cheer. The buildings seen at the back of the last picture might qualify as faux-Volendam.
Lastly, a sequence of all those half-photos. The colourful phallic statues in the last picture are a war monument, meant to represent a family.
